Whatcom County’s Behind-the-Scenes Reform

A More Equitable Justice System

Part 1

by Ella Gage

The Task Force’s Mission

At a federal level, Trump’s re-election threatens to advance brutal policing tactics and mass incarceration, pushing back nationwide movement toward justice reform. (1) However, state and local governments have jurisdiction over the bulk of criminal justice systems. In recent years, Whatcom County’s Law and Justice Council has rolled out a wide net of programs aimed at lowering incarceration and recidivism rates through systemic reform. (2)

Behind the Scenes graphic

artist: Ella Gage
Whatcom County and the City of Bellingham have developed a multitude of behavioral health and diversion programs including GRACE, LEAD, ART, the Anne Deacon Center, and Electronic Home Monitoring. They serve as “off-ramps” to arrest, prosecution, and incarceration.

Far from a traditional advisory body you’d see at a local level, the Whatcom County Council doubles as the Incarceration Prevention & Reduction Task Force (IPRTF), a sprawling 30-member coalition aiming to address the root causes of low-level crimes to create a more equitable, health-based, and efficient justice system with “rehabilitation as the goal.” (3)

They are doing this through the development of extensive public health and social service programming, as well as criminal diversion programs. (2)This work is lesser-known in the public sphere as it largely happens behind-the-scenes in county boardrooms and meetings.

Last year, Whatcom County voters passed Proposition 4, (4) which will provide funding for 15 projects outlined by the Task Force’s long-term goals for justice reform (5). The IPRTF can be conceived as somewhat of a think tank, laying out a roadmap for reform.

Our community has dealt with complex growing pains: homelessness, opioid, fentanyl, and jail crises, as acknowledged in Mayor Kim Lund’s executive order released in February. (6) These interrelated issues have strained local justice and healthcare systems to the point that local leadership has come together to assess, streamline, and rewire these systems altogether.

The 2015-established IPRTF has a diverse and powerful membership including the mayor, city council members, the county’s sheriff, health department supervisor, prosecutor, public defender, judge, EMS manager, and more. (2) The goal is to put everyone who has the power to create substantial change in the same room. (See the sidebar to the right.)

What we’ve done in the past — globally and culturally — hasn’t worked … War on drugs didn’t work, locking people up because of addiction doesn’t work,” said Dan Hammill, Bellingham City Council President and IPRTF member. “I came to this work because I deeply believed we have fundamental changes that need to happen when it comes to how we are addressing the health crisis we have in our community.” County leadership has begun looking at public safety as an issue largely synonymous with public health.

Through an assisted diversion program, alternate response teams, the opening of a crisis stabilization center, behavioral health programs, and subsidized in-home detention, the IPRTF has increased access to necessary care for low-level offenders and those struggling with substancerelated or mental health crises in an effort to create a more equitable, accessible safety net. (7)

This is part of a broader goal to meet individuals’ needs and divert them from the justice system entirely, since a significant portion of the justice-involved population “… are individuals with serious mental illness, the vast majority of whom also have drug or alcohol-related needs that can complicate treatment.” (8)

Need for Systemic Change

If people are jailed for homelessness, drug use, or low-level misdemeanors, it’s been proven they have a higher likelihood to return to jail — or “recidivate” — than if they never did before. (9) Incarceration often leads to the onset or exacerbation of mental health issues and substance abuse (10), which work contrary to individuals’ successful re-entry into society. Seventy-seven percent of released prisoners are arrested again within five years, with 43 percent getting re-arrested within the year of their release. (9)

Jail is not the answer — especially considering our county’s drastically overburdened local jail. Whatcom County Jail’s occupancy has increased nearly ninefold between 1970 and 2014. (7)

The new jail project — passed by voters last November — will be a solution to inadequate infrastructure, though the IPRTF continues to develop alternatives that address mental health conditions, housing needs, and drug abuse. (7) The goal is to prevent criminal offenses, perhaps before they even happen.

We lack a federal response [to the jail crisis and drug epidemics], so it’s incumbent on local jurisdictions like cities and counties to come up with solutions,” said Hammill. “It’s very challenging considering the resources are not prevalent, but we have a duty to the folks who live in our communities, and to the families associated with folks who are victimized — or who have even committed crimes — to come up with some sort of resolution.”

Incarceration Prevention & Reduction Taskforce

Pioneering New Programs

The resolution lies in extending structural programming along the health continuum to a) divert at-risk individuals away from incarceration entirely, and b) provide support for those who have been recently released from prison. Since 2015, the IPRTF has developed a host of such programs. (2)

1. The LEAD program (Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion, est. 2020 — later also know as Let Everyone Advance With Dignity) provides an alternative to arrest for people struggling with extreme poverty or drug use who have had extensive contact with law enforcement. If they join the program, their basic needs like food, clothes, and a place to sleep are met. (11) Over time, they work with a case manager to address the root of the challenge and gain access to substance abuse treatment, stable housing, jobs, etc.

Over 35 counties across the country have adopted the LEAD program after Whatcom County developed it in 2019 and piloted it in 2020. (11)

LEAD grew from less than 100 to over 140 individuals, and contacts [from those in the program] to the hospital and the criminal justice system are down by 90 percent,” said Hammill. Additionally, participants in LEAD are 58 percent less likely to return to recidivate than those who do not participate in the program. (12)

2. The Anne Deacon Center for Hope (est. 2021) is a crisis stabilization center that offers short-term treatment for substance use as well as behavioral health services to adults throughout the county and the North Sound region.

Whatcom County Health and Community Services worked with the IPRTF to plan and secure funding for the center, which has doubled the capacity of the old Whatcom County Crisis Stabilization Center to extend accessibility to EMS. (13)

3. ART (est. January 2023) is Bellingham’s Alternate Response Team, a first responder for nonviolent behavioral health calls to law enforcement. Two behavioral health specialists are sent out to de-escalate mental health or substance use crises, which would’ve required a police response in the past.

Though life-threatening or violent situations still require law enforcement, ART works closely with the county’s Mobile Crisis Outreach Team (MCOT) and What-Comm 911 to determine the proper intervention. (14)

The alternate response time can usually respond to calls in 15 minutes or less with no gun and no badge,” said Hammill. Specialists help people problem- solve and stabilize so the behavior doesn’t escalate to the point they face arrest. Though ART responders are not longterm case managers, they work with Whatcom County Health and Community Services to establish treatment plans for individuals in need. (14)

4. GRACE is the Whatcom Ground-Level Response and Coordinated Engagement program. It is a collaborative system in which Intensive Care Managers work to meet the needs of familiar faces in the EMS and criminal justice systems —those whose needs cannot be met by a single agency. (15)

The GRACE team works within the county’s fire departments, police stations, and EMS services to connect recurrent emergency services users to ongoing support through community care providers. Hammill was the lead policymaker for GRACE. (15)

5. Subsidized in-house detention programs for both pre- and post-trial defendants. From 2016 to 2023, the sentences for 2,014 City of Bellingham defendants wearing ankle bracelets were completed. If instead, those defendants had spent time in the county jail, it would have cost the city approximately $9,200,000.

The county’s Electronic Equipment Program for alcohol and substance monitoring has had over 300 participants since 2018. (7)

The city is contracted with Friendship Diversion Services to provide GPS ankle monitoring bracelets in addition to alcohol monitoring devices. Off enders are pre-screened for safety purposes and FDS is alerted if they go into off -limits areas. (25)

If they qualify for the FDS program, they can continue working, getting an education, obtaining medical care, going to rehab and probation appointments, and remain at home with their families throughout the sentence. (25) Contrary to traditional incarceration, EHM allows individuals to retain their dignity, use their time productively, and avoid jail altogether.

6. The Justice Project Implementation Plan is IPRTF’s roadmap for addressing areas of need in the county’s health and justice continuums via Proposition 2023-04. Last November, Whatcom County voters approved Prop 4, which authorizes a minuscule sales tax (20 cents per $100) to fundraise for “a new county jail, behavioral health, withdrawal management services, supportive housing, and public safety.” (16)

Despite Whatcom County’s long push for diversion and alternatives, moving away from incarceration entirely is unrealistic. A new county jail is needed to keep up with demand since an average of 325 individuals are booked every day. (17) With crumbling infrastructure and over-packed cells — sometimes holding as many as three people — it has been past capacity for many years. (18)

The Justice Project’s 2023 Implementation Plan emphasizes that low-risk offenders will continue to be successfully diverted from the county jail altogether. For those who end up serving time, jail-based services for mental health and substance-use disorder will be extended to deal with the root causes of criminal behavior and support re-entry into society. (19)

After completing their sentence, the county aims to provide “immediate access to behavioral health and medical care, housing, employment, and support systems to avoid re-incarceration.” (19)

Key to Acronyms

Justice System Inefficiencies

In addition to a broader cultural shift away from incarceration (20), a crumbling jail and backlogged court system catalyzed the necessity of diversion within the local justice system after new jail levies subsequently failed in 2015 and 2017.

Post-pandemic, the [county] jail no longer holds for misdemeanors,” says Peter Frazier, a citizen representative of the IPRTF who serves as co-chair on the stakeholder advisory committee. “Diversion has become critically important, so now it’s pretty much the most dangerous people are the ones who are there.”

When the Covid-19 pandemic hit, crime rates across the nation rose drastically after decades of decline. (21) Simultaneously, prosecutors could not keep up with the influx of cases during the pandemic and the justice system crunched to a near-halt with people jailed for months waiting to stand trial. (7)

In 2020, state prisons admitted over 319,000 people. But it was local jails that dealt with the bulk of the burden, admitting over 8.7 million individuals. (22)

Covid-19 was what caused our courts to have such a problem with the backlog,” said Barry Buchanan, IPRTF’s county council liaison and chair of the Steering Subcommittee. “There was no way to move anyone through the system, whether it be through the prosecutor’s office, the public defender’s office, or the jail itself.” He called the pandemic-era backlog a three-pronged issue in which everything was working against the system.

The county’s justice department still only has 10 case officers managing approximately 2,100-2,200 individuals on probation, and the state’s competency evaluation and restoration services continue to be severely delayed due to “a high level of demand and limited resources” at a state level. (7)

Similarly, the Public Defender’s Office currently has 26.5 attorneys — but they would need to employ at least 63 more attorneys to keep up with a 2023 National Public Defense study’s recommendations. The study found public defenders were working far too many cases. (26) This has a substantial impact on incarceration rates and moving cases through the system since public defenders represent all of those accused who cannot afford an attorney.

Competency Restoration Challenges

According to the IPRTF’s Annual Report from June, “… Wait times for an evaluation and bed at the [competency restoration] facility can be months or longer and result in delayed trials and long jail stays.” The result? Individuals who have been arrested remain untreated in the Whatcom County jail for extensive periods of time pretrial. (7)

A competency restoration workgroup formed independently of the IPRTF strongly supports prosecutorial diversion programs as an alternative to jail for those who have committed low-level crimes — specifically as a result of homelessness, mental health, or substance use disorder. This way, their needs can be met through healthcare and case management without longterm judicial involvement. (7)

Despite competency restoration services falling underneath state responsibility, the state continues failing to provide competency restoration services due to a lack of resources and funding. Therefore, the burden of doing so has fallen largely on the county. (7)

Since January 2023, defense attorneys have been filing contempt of court sanctions for failure to transport defendants, accruing over half a million dollars. (7) The District Court Administration and District Court Probation are central members of the IPRTF working to streamline an overburdened justice system by assisting in the development of diversion programs.

Shift Away From Incarceration

Reducing inefficiencies within the justice system may have been the initial catalyst for the push toward reform, but a shift in public sentiment away from incarceration (20) is the driving force behind the IPRTF’s work.

The community needed to have a conversation around substance use disorder and behavioral health, and we look at them differently now,” said Buchanan. After the first jail levy failure, he’d participated in a Public Safety Committee listening tour through Ferndale, Deming, Southern Valley, Lynden, and Bellingham. “Even some of the most conservative people out in Lynden didn’t realize it, but when you sat them down in a room and asked some leading questions, the reaction was that we prefer treatment over punishment whenever possible.”

An ACLU poll found that 91 percent of Americans believe the criminal justice system is in need of reform and 71 percent said reducing incarceration rates should be prioritized. (23)

If we look at people as patients versus criminals or defendants or whatever the pejorative term is, we reach the goal faster because we’re coming from a care model that acknowledges social determinants of health, adverse childhood experiences influencing future behaviors,” said Hammill. “Shifting to look at these things as a community health issue rather than a criminal justice issue, we’ve pivoted away from the past and towards the future.”

Addressing low-level criminal behavior outside of a formal justice system is proven to lower the chance of subsequent offenses, and justice-involved youth are “far more likely to succeed” in education and employment if they are diverted rather than prosecuted. (20)

We’re addressing really intractable issues that are way above our community’s paygrade, yet the community has decided — as big-hearted Whatcom County voters — to take this stuff on,” said Frazier.

Moving forward, Frazier acknowledges the need to streamline the justice-involved agencies and continue to create affordable housing in the community.

On day one of being in the task force, everything feels like you’re standing under a tidal wave of the past as you’re trying to construct the future,” said Hammill. “We’ve largely pointed things in the right direction, but this isn’t something where there’s a concrete end goal, this is a practice.”

Building the Future

The Task Force recently secured funding for building a 23-Hour Crisis Relief Center, which aims to lower the wait times for trauma-informed behavioral healthcare. This will take the pressure off an understaffed EMS, an overbooked Anne Deacon Center, and the packed Whatcom County Jail. It will accommodate individuals endangering themselves or others when no other options are available for immediate treatment. (24) The project is slated to be completed in July 2026.

Moving forward, county administration on the Task Force has identified legislative priorities of affordable housing, behavioral health, public defense, and public health and human services. They continue to advocate for the state to take action to increase support for indigent defense, which is reaching crisis levels amidst insufficient funding and workloads for public defenders and insufficient competency restoration services. (7)

Additionally, the Task Force will continue assisting the county on the implementation of the Re-Entry Services Initiative which aims to extend healthcare, behavioral health services, and rehabilitation for those in correctional facilities 90 days prior to their release. (7)

My colleagues — the city and county council, mayor, executives — we all stand together when it comes to doing the right thing for our constituents and our community, and the Task Force gives us a pathway to do that,” said Hammill. He said addressing the dauntingly vast web of issues in our community via healthcare and justice reform is a multigenerational practice — one without a destination other than trying to do the right thing. But they are on the path of progress.

Despite the unforeseen consequences a second Trump term may have on mass incarceration, harsher policing, sentencing, and use of the death penalty (1), we must remember: change happens at the grassroots.

I’m realizing we very well may be national leaders in doing this important work at the county level,” said Frazier.

In Whatcom County, structural changes to create a more equitable, fair justice system have already been made. Despite the potential trickle-down effects of regressive federal policy, local reform will continue through the work of the IPRTF and the countless Whatcom County voters who support it.

Culturally in our community, we’re already there,” said Hammill. “And I think, locally, we’ve been there for over 10 years.”

Part 2

The January issue will explore the success and nuances of Bellingham’s life-changing Electronic Home Monitoring (EHM) program.

_______________________

Ella Gage is a journalism-public relations student at Western Washington University with a longstanding interest in environmental conservation, social issues, and the ways in which they intersect.

Sources

  1.  https://www.aclu.org/trump-on-the-criminal-legal-system
  2.  https://www.whatcomcounty.us/4086/Incarceration-Prevention-Reduction-Task-Force
  3.  https://www.whatcomcounty.us/DocumentCenter/View/77111/Ordinance-2023-039-Sales-Tax-Justice-Project?bidId=
  4.  https://www.whatcomcounty.us/DocumentCenter/View/77111/Ordinance-2023-039-Sales-Tax-Justice-Project?bidId=
  5.  https://www.whatcomcounty.us/DocumentCenter/View/76742
  6.  https://cob.org/wp-content/uploads/SIGNED_Executive-Order-to-Address-Fentanyl-Crisis-in-Downtown-Bellingham-022024.pdf
  7.  https://www.whatcomcounty.us/DocumentCenter/View/85871/IPRTF-2024-Annual-Report-
  8.  https://www.ncsl.org/civil-and-criminal-justice/the-legislative-primer-series-on-frontend-justice-defl ection-and-diversion
  9.  https://www.brookings.edu/articles/twelve-facts-about-incarceration-and-prisonerreentry/
  10.  https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2021/05/13/mentalhealthimpacts/#:~:text=Similarly%2C%20incarceration%20is%20often%20characterized,manage%20boredom%2C%20including%20substance%20abuse
  11.  https://www.whatcomcounty.us/3933/LEAD-Program
  12.  https://www.chuckanuthealthfoundation.org/lead-fund
  13.  https://www.whatcomcounty.us/2075/Crisis-Stabilization-Center
  14.  https://www.whatcomcounty.us/3934/ART-Program
  15.  https://www.whatcomcounty.us/4179/GRACE-Program
  16.  https://www.whatcomcounty.us/3351/Justice-Project-Public-Health-Safety-Jus
  17.  https://www.whatcomcounty.us/202/Corrections
  18.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOVtzutn2zU
  19.  https://www.whatcomcounty.us/DocumentCenter/View/76742/Implementation-Planfor-the-Whatcom-County-Justice-Project-June-2023-formatted?bidId=
  20.  https://www.sentencingproject.org/press-releases/new-report-americas-growingmovement-to-divert-youth-out-of-the-justice-system/
  21.  https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/myths-and-realities-understanding-recent-trends-violent-crime
  22.  https://www.ncsl.org/civil-and-criminal-justice the-legislative-primer-series-on-frontend-justice-defl ection-and-diversion
  23.  https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/91-percent-americans-support-criminal-justicereform-aclu-polling-fi nds
  24.  https://www.whatcomcounty.us/4409/23-Hour-Crisis-Relief-Center
  25.  https://whatcomwatch.org/index.php/article-bellingham-reduces-incarceration-challenge/
  26.  https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA2559-1.html

 

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